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COMRIGHT DEPOSIT; 




Photograph by J. S. banford 



Barnard's 
Lincoln 

The Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft 
to the City of Cincinnati 



The Creation and 

Dedication of 

George Grey Barnard's 

Statue of 

Abraham Lincoln, 

including the 

address of 

William Howard Taft 



Cincinnati 
Stewart & Kidd Company 



1917 



) ' » 



.C6'73Z,6 



Copyright, 1917, by 
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 

All Rights Reserved 
Copyright in England 



/ 



AUG -2 1917 



A473U10 

H*> / « 



"The Barnard statue is a beautiful 
piece of workmanship and a perfect 
likeness of Mr. Lincoln. I was well 
acquainted with Mr. Lincoln during 
my residence at Springfield, Illinois, 
before the war." 

ROBERT C. CLOWRY, 

Former President of the Western Union Telegraph 

Company. 
January 6, 1917. 



Contents 



TACiE 



Preface -------- 9 

Poem by Dr. Lyman Whitney Allen 15 

The Sculptor's View - - - - 21 

Address of William Howard Taft - 33 

Speech of Acceptance - 61 

Explanation of the Cire Perdue 

Process - - 65 






List of Illustrations 

PAOE 

The Head of "Lincoln" - - Frontispiece v 
Full-Length Photograph - - - 14 ' 
Barnard in His Studio - - - - 20 v 

The Unveiling 32 ^ 

Environment of Statue - - - - 60 '' 
Etching by E. T. Hurley - 64 v 



Preface 

THIS book is the result of a demand for 
a memorial of George Grey Barnard's 
statue of Abraham Lincoln and of the 
ceremonies attending its unveiling. The facts 
attending Mr. Barnard's distinctive inter- 
pretation of America's Great Commoner will 
be briefly related. On December 10, 1910, 
Mr. Barnard received his commission to create 
the statue from a committee consisting of 
Harry R. Probasco, A. O. Elzner, the late 
W. W. Taylor, Louis Grossmann, and Charles 
P. Taft, as the result of the gift of $100,000 
from Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft for the 
purpose. Mr. Barnard completed his work in 
the early part of 1917 and the statue Mas 
placed on exhibition in the grounds of the 
Union Theological Seminary in New York 
City, where it aroused enthusiastic critical ap- 
preciation. It was later removed to Cincinnati 
and placed in its permanent location in Lytle 
Park, facing Fourth Street, one of the city's 



10 PREFACE 

greater thoroughfares. On March 31, under 
cloudless skies, the statue was unveiled with 
ceremonies that acquired unusual significance 
because of the entrance of the United States 
into the world war. Thousands of people, in- 
cluding a great number of school children, 
witnessed the ceremonies, which were arranged 
by Mr. John R. Holmes. Mr. Edward Col- 
ston, a Confederate veteran, presided. Bishop 
J. C. Hartzell delivered the invocation, and 
Rabbi Louis Grossmann the benediction. Dr. 
Lyman Whitney Allen, of Newark, New Jer- 
sey, read the beautiful ode contained in this 
volume. The Honorable William Howard 
Taft delivered the principal address, present- 
ing the Barnard statue in the name of Mr. and 
Mrs. Charles P. Taft, and the mayor of Cin- 
cinnati, the Honorable George Puchta, ac- 
cepted in behalf of the city. 

The Barnard "Lincoln" definitely has taken 
its place, not only in the artistic chronicles of 
the nation, but in a great people's conception 
of their most representative man. It is a Lin- 
coln that seems to bear in divine benevolence 
of expression the true destinies of world de- 
mocracy. No man can stand before it with- 



PREFACE 11 

out drawing from it a new inspiration as to 
his country's ideals and a new faith in their 
future. You are in a sense touched by the 
hallowed spirit, the strongly gentle soul, that 
looms to-day larger than ever in this world of 
militaristic ambition. He freed men and he 
bound a nation's wounds, and he did it all with 
noble simplicity and self-abnegation. To-day 
the world is placing him among its great moral 
powers above its Ceesars. The reason for this 
canonization has been nobly expressed in the 
medium of bronze by Mr. Barnard. 



Barnard's Statue of Lincoln 




Photograph by J. 8. Uanford. 



Full-Length Photograph 



Barnard's Statue of Lincoln 

Dr. Lyman Whitney Allen 

The clay again has found a dowered hand 
To shape a wonder. Lo, the sculptor's art 
Has made its last the finest. There he stands 
A people's idol! This is masterpiece 
Of man, as was the loved original 
Of God — invention's triumph for life's sake, 
Great history featured by great artistry, 
A poet's allegory wrought in bronze. 

This is a symbol of democracy — 
A towering figure risen from the soil 
And keeping the earth mold, yet so informed 
By spiritual power that they who gaze 
Perceive high kinship bearing similar stamp 
To One of eld from whom was learned the way 
Of wisdom and the love that goes to death. 
And this is commonalty glorified — 
A root out of dry ground, but watered 
By those inherent and ancestral streams 
Whose springs are in the furthest heavenlies. 
And this is nature's haunting miracle — 
The lowly dust builded to pinnacles, 
The earth-bound soul consorting with the stars. 
15 



16 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

Unshapely feet — but they were such as trod 
The winepress of God's judgment on a land. 
Were such as clomb, striding through storm and 

night, 
The perilous steeps of right, leading a host. 
Ungainly hands — but they were such as plucked 
Thistles and planted flowers in their stead. 
Were such as struck hell's irons from a race 
And open swung barred gates of privilege. 
Unsightly back — but it was such as bore 
The bruises of a nation's chastisement, 
For see, the double cross welted thereon. 
The emblem of a statesman's Calvary! 
Uncomely face — but it was such as wore 
The prints of vigil and the scars of grief, 
A face more marred than any man's, save One, 
And save that One a face more beautiful. 

Those furrows, deftly molded, came from tears, 

The visualizing of vicarious pain. 

That writhed curve of lips marks forced control, 

Restraint of impulse for the sake of duty. 

Those intercessory eyes gaze awesomely, 

Seeing far off as if they searched God's eyes 

For convenant vindication, finding it. 

Yon brow, it bears the impress of a Hand 

Upon the sculptor's, that historic front 

May show receptive to divine ideals, 

May signal truth's elect interpreter. 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 17 

So stands he regnant in triumphant bronze, 

A spirit mastering fate by faith and love 

And imaging right's lordship o'er the world — 

So stands he, Heaven and Earth's great commoner, 

God's and the People's, light unto the nations, 

Lincoln the deathless, Lincoln the beloved. 



The Sculptor's View 




1'hotograph by Underwood & Underwood. 

Barnard in His Studio 



The Sculptor's View of Lincoln 



M 



BY 

George Grey Barnard 

Y earliest recollections are of my 
grandfather's talks of Douglas and 
Lincoln. A friend to both, he often 
told stories of Douglas, princely, stately, 
elegant, and Lincoln, rising from poverty to 
President. This left but one image in my 
childhood mind: the mighty man who grew 
from out the soil and the hardships of the earth. 
He who had within him that indomitable spirit, 
that great call, and followed it straight to his 
destiny. 

We are all tools to the Creator, bad or good. 
Lincoln was chilled in all the streams of life, 
to make ready the tool of the nation and man- 
kind. Many have stood at the bedside of their 
dead mothers, but few at seven years of age 
have helped to make the coffin and dig the 
grave of a mother. And such a mother as Lin- 
coln's must have had made greater his agony, 

21 



22 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

left a memory so vital that through life this 
giant, physically and mentally, "mothered" his 
neighbors, his State, his country. 

This "man of all men" held motherhood 
within him as great in its strength and gentle 
spirit, its forgiveness and yearning, as the wis- 
dom and will of the manhood within him. 

One given to such meditation must often 
have studied the trees, watched the angles of 
every limb marking the history of its fight 
toward the light. So moved the spirit of Lin- 
coln, always toward the light, regardless of a 
thousand limbs that threatened to hide his own 
life and light. 

With the order for a Lincoln my work be- 
gan. An imaginary Lincoln is an insult to the 
American people, a thwarting of democracy. 
No imitation tool of any artist's conception, 
but the tool God and Lincoln made — Lincoln's 
self — must be shown. I found the many pho- 
tographs retouched so that all form had been 
obliterated. This fact I have never seen in 
print. The eyes and mouth carry a message, 
but the rest was stippled over, to prettify this 
work of God, by the photographers of the 
time. Nearing election, they feared his ugly 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 23 

lines might lose him the Presidency. So the 
lines were softened down, softened in cloudy 
shades of nothingness — this man, made like the 
oak trees and granite rocks. To most, the life 
mask is a dead thing; to the artist, life's archi- 
tecture. 

We and future ages have this life mask to 
fathom, to interpret, to translate. Art is the 
science that hridges 'tween nature and man. 
Sculpture heing a science to interpret living 
forms, hidden secrets of nature are revealed by 
it. Lincoln's life mask is the most wonderful 
face left to us, a face utterly opposed to those 
of the emperors of Rome or a Napoleon. 
They, with the record of a dominating will, 
self-assertive over others; Lincoln's, com- 
manding self for the sake of others, a spiritual 
will based on reason. His powerful chin is 
flanked on either side by powerful construction 
reaching like steps of a pyramid from chin to 
ear, eye and brain, as if his forces took birth in 
thought within, conceived in architecture with- 
out, building to the furthermost limits of his 
face, to the fruits of toil in his wondrous hands 
— hands cast from life at the time of the mask 
by Douglas Volk. 



24 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

For one hundred days I sought the secret of 
this face in the marvelous constructive work of 
God. Here is no line, no form, to interpret 
lightly, to evade or cover. Every atom of its 
surface belongs to some individual form, melt- 
ing into a larger form and again into the form 
of the whole. The mystery of this whole form 
nature alone knows — man will never fathom it, 
but at least he should not bring to this problem 
forms of his own making. 

Nothing is easier than to have a molder for 
five dollars push clay into the mold of Lin- 
coln's face and give it to one ready to open the 
eyes and stick on hair, smoothing the surfaces 
and calling out, "Lincoln." But art's virtue is 
to reveal, not to obscure. It is a power to make 
plain hidden things. Art is not nature, the 
mask of Lincoln not sculpture. The mask 
controls its secrets, Lincoln's life revealed 
them, as the sculptor must reveal the power 
and purpose of this wondrous mask. 

The left side of Lincoln's face is the mother- 
hood side, the right side man's. Beneath the 
left eye two mountains lie ; from the valley be- 
tween soft light flows, a gentle stream; it 
bursts upon a circular muscular hill in form 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 25 

like a petrified tear through sadness and joy 
placed there. Then all flow together, turning 
into a smile at his lips, like a stream through a 
dark valley of shadows coming to its own into 
the sunshine. 

People say who saw: "Lincoln often looked 
the Christ." This face is infinitely nearer an 
expression of our Christ character than all the 
conventional pictures of the "Son of God." 
That symbolic head, with its long hair parted 
in the middle and features that never lived, is 
the creation of artists, Lincoln's face the tri- 
umph of God through man and of man 
through God. One, fancy; the other, truth at 
labor. Lincoln, the song of democracy written 
by God. His face, the temple of his manhood, 
we have with us in the life mask. 

The Olympian Zeus in its remoteness from 
the life of the people, the life that must be 
lived, is the antithesis of Lincoln's. In the lat- 
ter all self-consciousness is effaced, there is no 
lurking hint that the spirit behind and within 
was disturbed by the temple it dwelt in. All 
its lines lead away from self-center. As I 
wrought at this face facade I was conscious of 
being gradually drawn back of the face and 



26 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

forever onward. Thought born within this 
face sprang outward in every direction, in its 
flight gentle, unending, toward the truth of 
things, for the truth of things, truth at labor. 

Out of the study of Lincoln's life mask 
grew the entire poise of his figure. He must 
have stood as the Republic should stand, 
strong, simple, carrying its weight uncon- 
sciously without pride in rank or culture. He 
is clothed with cloth worn, the history of labor. 
The records of labor in Lincoln's clothes are 
the wings of his victory. The "Winged Vic- 
tory" of Samothrace was an allegory of what 
Lincoln lived. His wings were acts, his fields 
of flight the hearts of men, their laughter, their 
life. Tradition is, he stood "bent at the knees." 
This is not true. Worn, baggy trousers, for- 
gotten, unthought of, honored their history. 

My intense desire to tell the truth about Lin- 
coln's form led me to search through two years 
for a model that should approximate the man 
he must have been. I traveled through the 
States, North and South, East and West. I 
advertised and went personally to look at many 
men. At last in Louisville, Kentucky, after a 
great number had come to me, I found the one 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 27 

I wanted. He was six feet four and one half 
inches, and realized as nearly as any other be- 
ing conceivably could all that we know of Lin- 
coln's appearance. I asked him about himself, 
and he gave this curious account: 

"I was born on a farm only fifteen miles 
from where Lincoln was born. My father, 
my father's father, and his father were all born 
there." 

A study of this man's body showed it to be 
in harmony with the body of Lincoln. The 
Greeks had nothing like that. It was a gen- 
uine product of American soil, as typical in its 
way as the Indians. The legs were long and 
he had a back that seemed to bend without 
causing a corresponding cavity in front. I 
spoke of this to him, and he said : 

"I have been splitting rails all my life." 

He was about forty years old. That was the 
natural explanation of his over-developed back 
and shoulder muscles. Lincoln had gone 
through the same exercise, and the same result 
was noted in his form. He was probably the 
most powerful physical being known to the 
frontier life. 

I have seen the models of Europe — men of 



28 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

Greece and Italy — symmetrical and beautiful 
in a classic way; but nothing ever appealed to 
me like the form of this Kentuckian. It af- 
fected the spirit like the passing of a storm 
through the sky. I am working now on a head 
that 1 hope will enable me to carry out this 
feeling, a head fifteen feet in height. Lincoln 
is the unveiling of the Sphinx. That ancient 
figure out on the desert sand meant slavery, 
mental, moral, and physical. The men of that 
day were bound in their environment; they saw 
no end to the problem of life. 

Lincoln stands for clearness, for knowl- 
edge. He deals simply with the facts of life, 
helps his neighbors in their homely tasks, 
laughs with them. There is mystery in him, 
but it is the mystery of the spirit brought down 
and put to the service of men. 

One still of the living, who knew Lincoln 
face to face from his own birth to Lincoln's 
death, came to see Lincoln in bronze. Strange, 
this man still holds the position given him by 
Lincoln fifty-odd years ago in our New York 
custom house. Born opposite Lincoln's home, 
he tells of one day when he was operator at 
the telegraph office in Springfield. A great 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 29 

hand was placed on his head, which never left 
it through all his seventy-six years — the hand 
of Lincoln. Five days after seeing Lincoln 
he wrote: 

"Dear Mr. Barnard: I want you to know 
that the reason you have not heard from me 
before is that in my eagerness to see every out- 
line and pose of my dear old friend, Mr. Lin- 
coln, as you have depicted him and as I remem- 
ber him, from my babyhood to my manhood, 
I foolishly stood before him without my hat 
and have had a severe cold ever since Sunday. 
I could not stand before your Lincoln with 
covered head, and with those dear eyes looking 
down as if he would say, 'Well, Harry, how 
are you, my boy?' as he used to greet me in 
the old days in Springfield. 

"You have given us the only 'Soulful Lin- 
coln,' and I congratulate you, and future gen- 
erations will bless George Grey Barnard, the 
man who gave us this Lincoln. Mr. Taft and 
Cincinnati have a prize that they well may be 
proud to have. 

"Your Lincoln without whiskers is the man 
we of Springfield loved. 

"Thanking you for the treat you gave me 
to commune with my friend, I am, sincerely 
yours, II. W. Gourley." 



30 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

My Lincoln of bronze is to me but the "foot- 
prints in a path of clay," as I made my way 
looking upon truths above. It may have no 
value to others, may express nothing of my 
journey in the heart of Lincoln, but I pray it 
may carry to others a trace of what I myself 
read. 



Presentation Address 



Presentation Address 

BY 

The Honorable 
William Howard Taft 



WHEN we read of the origin of Lin- 
coln, the squalor of his early sur- 
roundings, the ignorance and shift- 
less character of his father, and have so little 
knowledge of the traits and intelligence of his 
mother, it seems as difficult to explain what he 
did, what he was, and what he is now in the 
estimate of his countrymen and of the world, 
as it is to reconcile the origin and education of 
Shakespeare and his immortal plays. Yet, 
when we follow Lincoln's life closely, and 
when we accompany this by a study of the 
politics of the period in which he lived, we find 
the clue. As we look back now, no matter 
what men then said, no matter what issues 
they then framed, slavery was the disease from 
which the nation was suffering, and until by 

33 



34 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

a capital operation that was removed, all hope 
of progress, all hope of successful continuance 
of popular government was impossible. 

As the antagonist of slavery, as the emanci- 
pator of the negro, Lincoln's career from its 
beginning to its end is a symmetrical and con- 
sistent whole. As a young man he visited New 
Orleans and saw the auction block upon which 
human beings were sold. From that time the 
iron entered his soul. From that time he be- 
came a champion of the oppressed race and a 
seeker after the Holy Grail of Freedom. 
Many of our public men of Lincoln's genera- 
tion began in an humble way. The life of the 
pioneers in the early Middle West was not lux- 
urious for any of them. But Lincoln's ex- 
ceeded any in penury, in exposure, in its entire 
lack of educational opportunities and in its al- 
most nomadic phases. He was indeed of the 
soil. He had struggled with his father on a 
poor farm. He had worked his way on a flat- 
boat down the Mississippi and back. He had 
conducted a country store. He and his parents 
were the plainest of the plain people. He lived 
and dressed and ate and spoke as they did. 
His exterior was rough and apparently un- 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 35 

refined. He had a thirst for knowledge, and 
more than any man we know, he educated him- 
self. Not alone in the study of the books he 
was able to secure, but in the strengthening of 
his reasoning processes by an introspection 
that was as thorough as it was severe. 

That training of his mind went on through 
life. His modesty, one of the most marked of 
his traits, was the result of his inexorable self- 
examination, and his fear that his mental proc- 
esses did not work true. This fear at times 
gave him a morbid tendency which threatened 
to interfere with his career. It affected his 
love affairs, created much unhappiness for him 
and others, and led him to a course of conduct 
sometimes that seemed strange and unmanly. 
He had but few books, but they were good ones, 
and he studied them with an eagerness and a 
thoroughness which touched the innate genius 
with their power. He loved the Bible. He 
loved Shakespeare. The limpid beauty of his 
diction finds its source in those wells of Eng- 
lish undefiled. The poetry in both found an 
echoing response in his soul. They gave to 
much of what he spoke and wrote a rhythm 
which is the wonder of literary critics. They 



36 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

explain the soul-stirring and heart-satisfying 
simplicity and grandeur of the Gettysburg 
speech and the second inaugural. 

He studied law and practiced it. He went 
to the Legislature. He went to Congress. He 
loved the law and he loved politics, but he 
never allowed politics, as so many lawyers do, 
to impair his mental honesty and the rigor and 
vigor with which he hewed to the line in reason- 
ing sternly to his conclusions. He was a law- 
yer who studied government, and who under- 
stood, as few men did, the relation between law 
and the pursuit of happiness by the individual. 

No one had a greater detestation for slavery 
than had Lincoln, but he fully admitted its con- 
stitutional status and the protection to which, 
by the law of the country, it was entitled. He 
felt that it must be and would be abolished. 
Meantime it was to be dealt with as a fact. It 
was to be limited, so far as political action 
could limit it, and its extension was to be 
fought with all the fervor of which he was 
capable. He devoted the twenty-five years be- 
fore he came to the Presidency to a constant 
and close study of the slavery issue under the 
Federal Constitution, and the conditions that 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 37 

prevailed. No one in the country came to be 
better prepared to discuss it from the stand- 
point of an anti-slavery man who wished to live 
under the constitution and sought only peace- 
able and lawful methods for the amelioration 
of the evil that must ultimately be eradicated. 

The trouble with most men in reference to a 
great issue in politics or in religion, or in any 
other important field of action, is that they 
don't know themselves exactly what they think. 
They know generally what they would like to 
think and they have dimly formed in their 
minds general arguments to sustain their view, 
but they do not analyze their attitude so that 
they may state with clearness their opinion and 
sustain it by well thought-out reasoning. They 
are lazy-minded, even where they have the 
mental capacity needed for the analysis. Lin- 
coln, on the contrary, subjected his views to a 
constant test. He sat as a judge upon himself 
and his views. He took up and fairly weighed 
every opposing argument. 

Therefore, when, with the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise, the Kansas and Nebraska 
Controversy and the Dred- Scott Decision, the 
issue over slavery became more and more acute, 



38 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

he found himself ready as a trained athlete for 
the controversy that circumstances were mak- 
ing the absorbing national issue. There were 
others in the field, Seward and Chase, both 
strong anti-slavery men, but neither with the 
honesty of mind, the modesty of attitude, and 
the certainty of exact analysis which Lincoln 
had. This preparation, with his love of poli- 
tics and his experience, brought him more and 
more to the front in the struggle of the parties 
in Illinois. With a self-abnegation that char- 
acterized him his life long, he yielded the sen- 
atorship to Trumbull in the interest of the 
party in 1856, and it was not until the cam- 
paign of 1858 against Stephen A. Douglas 
for the Senate that he became the titular as 
well as the real head of the Republican party 
in the State. Then out of the confusion of 
politics came this clearly drawn issue, this con- 
test between champions, and the country 
looked on with intense interest to the progress 
of the Lincoln-Douglas debate. 

In his first speech Lincoln had the courage 
to say when it took courage to say it: 

"A house divided against itself cannot 
stand. I believe this Government cannot en- 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 39 

dure permanently half slave and half free. I 
do not expect the Union to he dissolved — I do 
not expect the house to fall — hut I do expect 
that it will cease to he divided. It will become, 
all one thing or all the other. Either the op- 
ponents of slavery will arrest the further 
spread of it and place it where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course 
of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will 
push it forward till it shall become lawful alike 
in all the States, old as well as new — North as 
well as South." 

"What, in God's name." asked a friend, 
"could induce you to promulgate such an opin- 
ion?" "Upon my soul," Lincoln answered, 
"I think it is true." It made the sharp and 
clear issue to which Lincoln's mind had re- 
duced it, and it startled the country out of con- 
fused thinking into the light of the truth. 
Lincoln said: 

"The time has come when these sentiments 
should be uttered; and if it is decreed that I 
should go down because of this speech, then 
let me go down linked with the truth — let me 
die in the advocacy of what is just and right." 

A reading of the debates marks a clear dis- 



40 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

tinction between the two men. Judge Douglas 
was a masterful, fluent, and forcible debater, 
not above resort to appeals to partisan preju- 
dice, and entirely willing to deny or ignore 
perfectly logical distinctions which Mr. Lin- 
coln made in his statement of principles and of 
his position. Judge Douglas at times lost his 
temper and resorted to epithet and denunci- 
ation. Mr. Lincoln never lost his temper and 
but rarely used a word of opprobrium which 
might better have been omitted. 

There are those who have used Mr. Lin- 
coln's treatment of the Dred-Scott decision as 
a basis for attacking all courts' decisions set- 
ting aside laws as unconstitutional. Mr. Lin- 
coln's criticism of the Dred-Scott decision was 
eminently just and fair. If there ever was a 
decision calling for attack, it was that. In the 
view which the majority of the court took, it 
had no jurisdiction in the case, and this, with- 
out regard to whether Congress had power to 
forbid slavery in the Territories or not. Yet 
the same majority went out of its way to hold 
the Missouri Compromise of thirty years' 
standing unconstitutional. It lugged it into 
the case by the hair of the head. It was a gross 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 41 

violation of judicial propriety and its conclu- 
sion was a clear case of an obiter dictum. 

In view of this phase of the decision, Lin- 
coln refused to treat it as binding authority f or 
future congressional action and insisted that 
it would and must be reversed. It was an atti- 
tude which he would have been entirely justi- 
fied in taking in a subsequent case in the same 
court really presenting the vital issue. 

Mr. Lincoln was a great lawyer, and his at- 
titude toward the courts was what might be ex- 
pected of him. He would have been the last to 
weaken their useful authority in maintaining 
the Constitution. He would have made a great 
Chief Justice, a second Marshall. 

The circumstances focused the attention of 
the country upon these debates in Illinois and 
gave them supremely national importance. 
Slavery was the issue upon which had centered 
for fifty years all other political controversies, 
and now it was being fought out, as in the 
arena, with the people of the entire country as 
onlookers. It is not too much to say that Lin- 
coln, in his discussion, settled the attitude of 
the Republican party, that his debates made 
the platform, and that, although down to the 



42 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

time of the debate he was by no means promi- 
nent in a national way, or the foremost man in 
his party, he then became so by the demonstra- 
tion of his fitness to lead in the part which he 
took in the debate. 

In this debate, of course, no one whispered 
the probability of war or conflict between sec- 
tions. Each champion disclaimed the slightest 
sympathy with violent methods, or the pursuit 
of any other than those purely within the law, 
and while Lincoln expressed the hope that 
slavery might ultimately be extinguished, he 
pointed to no specific method by which this 
might be accomplished. 

The debate clarified the minds of many peo- 
ple and drew the issue more sharply than ever 
on the advance or retrogression of slavery. It 
was an epoch-making event and brought 
about the election of Lincoln, the war, and all 
that followed. 

When Lincoln came to the Presidency, his 
experience in the administration of govern- 
ment had been practically nothing. As a 
member of the Legislature of Illinois and as 
a congressman a number of years before he 
had had some familiarity with the operations 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 43 

of government, and he was a lawyer who knew 
the Constitution, and knew it well. But in the 
details of how the government was run he had 
neither knowledge nor practice. He had, how- 
ever, long been in politics. He had a keen 
knowledge of men and of human nature, and 
the accuracy of his forecast as to what men 
would do under given circumstances was mar- 
velous. He had, moreover, the certainty of an 
advantage in dealing with any one with whom 
he came in contact, of keeping his temper, and 
of allowing no considerations of personal 
vanity or profit to interfere with his judgment 
of the situation or his action. 

The yearning of the day with respect to a 
man like Lincoln, or a man like Washington, 
or a man like Shakespeare, is to get close to 
his personality. If such men had Boswells as 
Johnson had, it would greatly aid and satisfy 
the longing of the world. But there are few 
Boswells. The diary of Gideon Welles, Lin- 
coln's Secretary of the Navy, is a valuable ad- 
dition to the inside view of the Lincoln admin- 
istration. Welles was an admirer of Lincoln 
and loyal to him always, but he had no con- 
ception of his real greatness. He brings out 



44 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

in bold relief the chaotic confusion and almost 
helplessness that confronted the new adminis- 
tration immediately after the inauguration. 

Welles reports a conversation with Lincoln 
in respect to the formation of the Cabinet, in 
which Lincoln said he made his selections the 
night he received the news of his election. In 
making them he was controlled by his desire to 
unite all the forces opposed to secession in sup- 
port of his administration, and sought to knit 
the bonds of the Republican party more closely 
by inviting into his National Council those who 
were candidates against him for the nomina- 
tion. These were Senator Seward of New 
York and Governor Chase of Ohio. Seward 
had been bitterly disappointed by the result of 
the Chicago convention, which preferred Lin- 
coln to him. He looked upon Lincoln as one 
unfitted by experience to discharge the duties 
of the Presidency. 

When, therefore, he was invited into the 
Cabinet to become Secretary of State, he as- 
sumed that he was to be premier of the Cabinet 
and to exercise a power akin to that of the 
British premier. He therefore busied himself 
with the affairs of every department, and 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 45 

sought to control appointments in all of them. 
Mr. Lincoln was so modest and unassuming 
that Mr. Seward, who was neither, tried to 
take charge, and it was some time before Mr. 
Lincoln, in a quiet, sweet way, made his Secre- 
tary of State know that Mr. Lincoln was the 
President and not Mr. Seward. Governor 
Chase, who became the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, had become an Abolitionist and a leader 
in the anti-slavery movement. He was a man 
of high ambitions and a coldly selfish nature, 
and not at all above intrigue to accomplish his 
purpose. 

Mr. Seward did not welcome him into the 
Cabinet — indeed, he made an effort to prevent 
his appointment — but Mr. Lincoln, pursuing 
his plan of uniting all elements of the party, 
disregarded the objection. The result was, 
that just as Washington in the beginning of 
the Government had to prevent an open rup- 
ture between Jefferson and Hamilton in his 
Cabinet, so Mr. Lincoln was engaged in keep- 
ing within control the irreconcilable natures 
and personal purposes of Secretary Seward 
and Secretary Chase as long as Mr. Chase re 
mained in the Cabinet. 



46 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

The character of Mr. Stanton has been the 
subject of much controversy. It was charac- 
teristic of Mr. Lincoln to take Mr. Stanton 
into the Cabinet because he believed him to be 
a man of power, whom he could use in a place 
of tremendous responsibility. Mr. Lincoln 
owed Mr. Stanton nothing in the way of favor 
from their previous relations. They had been 
associated in a lawsuit together, in which Mr. 
Stanton ignored Mr. Lincoln and violated the 
proprieties in doing so. As a former member 
of President Buchanan's Cabinet, Mr. Stan- 
ton's criticisms of Mr. Lincoln's administration 
were by no means friendly, but without the 
slightest regard to these Mr. Lincoln called 
him to the great post of Secretary of War and 
maintained him there until his death, although 
Stanton made many enemies and must have 
tried Mr. Lincoln greatly with his capacity for 
acting and speaking like a human burr. It is 
still a subject of controversy how effective 
Stanton was. He was a man of tremendous 
industry, but whether his prejudices of a per- 
sonal character interfered with his usefulness 
in the selection of officers for the army is not 
entirely clear. Mr. Welles's animadversions 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 47 

upon Stanton are very severe, but Mr. Welles 
is censorious and was the head of a rival de- 
partment, so to speak, and perhaps did not 
give the proper credit to Stanton. 

The feature of Mr. Lincoln's character 
which presses itself upon the reader of the his- 
tory of his administration is his long-suffering 
patience. One's indignation is awakened at 
the attitude of members of his Cabinet and of 
high military commanders toward him. The 
willingness of Mr. Lincoln to overlook the 
boorish conceit, the querulous suspicions, the 
offensive and almost contemptuous attitude to- 
ward Mr. Lincoln's suggestions of McClellan 
reveal a self-abnegation and a pathetic self- 
restraint and sinking of the personal equation 
that we find nowhere else in our history. It 
was not that Mr. Lincoln did not observe these 
things, for he did, and he seems to have under- 
stood the occasion for them, but he deliberately 
ignored them for the great cause for which he 
was willing to make any sacrifice. He felt 
himself, when he came into office, lacking in 
experience, and that was one of the sources of 
his modesty and the reason why he sought ad- 
vice on everv hand and invited discussion of 



48 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

every issue and weighed every argument with 
judicial impartiality. 

Lincoln's sense of humor was fine. A sense 
of humor involves a proper appreciation of the 
proportion of things and the enjoyment of the 
sensation of surpise at the unexpected relation 
of one thing to another. This gave Mr. Lin- 
coln a great advantage, which he cultivated. 
It enabled him to remember or create stories 
illustrating current situations. Doubtless Mr. 
Lincoln enjoyed stories as a part of social in- 
tercourse, but his use of them went far beyond 
this. They were a real aid to him in avoiding 
direct antagonisms, in refusing requests with- 
out offense, and in picking his path through a 
maze of difficulties. 

The anxious search of Mr. Lincoln for a 
man whose military skill and courage and te- 
nacity of purpose he could impose confidence 
is tragic when we consider the failures that cre- 
ated agony of spirit for him in McClellan, 
Pope, Hooker, Burnside, and even Halleck. 
It is easy to understand the gratitude he felt 
toward Grant, who relieved Lincoln by his 
steady, persistent course in finding the enemy 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 49 

and fighting him wherever he found him, until 
victory came. 

It is of course useless to conjecture what 
might have happened if a man of Grant's quiet 
courage and effectiveness and singleness of 
purpose had come to Mr. Lincoln's attention 
and had heen selected by him earlier. Perhaps 
it was necessary that Grant should receive the 
experience of Belmont, of Fort Henry and 
Fort Donelson and Shiloh, Vicksburg and 
Chattanooga before he was made ready to the 
hand of Lincoln as the commander of all the 
forces. Perhaps it was necessary that Lin- 
coln's soul should be tried by the mistakes, de- 
lays, perverseness, and jealousies of the first 
commanders of the Army of the Potomac. 
The failure of McClellan to follow up his 
victory at Antietam, and of Meade to cap- 
ture Lee's army after Gettysburg, tried Lin- 
coln's soul. He suffered martyrdom often 
before he became a victim of the assassin's 
bullet. The men about him did not seem to 
realize his greatness. Stanton is reported to 
have said, at Lincoln's deathbed, after he 
closed the great man's eyes in death, "Now he 



50 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

belongs to the ages"; but he spake better than 
he knew. 

Time does not permit us to dwell in detail 
upon the tremendous task of Mr. Lincoln in 
the conduct of the war. His appeal to the 
South for peace in his first inaugural put the 
responsibility for the war where history must 
place it, and consisted with Mr. Lincoln's atti- 
tude throughout the struggle, of willingness 
to make peace on condition of the maintenance 
of the Union and the eradication of slavery in 
a constitutional and peaceful way. 

The greatness of his work was in the clear- 
ness of his vision as to the end to be achieved, 
in the wonderful political genius with which, 
when disaffection and disloyalty threatened in 
the North and the border States, he held the 
Union sentiment united for the war through 
the discouraging military disasters of the first 
two years, and again in the gloom of the spring 
and summer of 1864, preceding his second 
election. Acquiring by steady and hard experi- 
ence the principles of grand military strategy, 
his suggestions, in his letters to his generals, 
commend themselves as models. As we read 
the history of the times in the light of complete 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 51 

knowledge, he stands out as the only figure in 
Washington wholly unaffected hy personal 
considerations and with an eye single to the 
great end. This is what raises him so high 
above his associates. This loneliness in his 
point of view, as he labored to reconcile the 
personal and the selfish in his associates to the 
need and saving of the nation, makes the pas- 
sion of his life, so gloriously ended by his death 
in the hour of his supreme victory. 

There is a parallelism between the life of 
our greatest American and the life of the 
greatest European statesman of the nineteenth 
century — Cavour. Lincoln was, of course, the 
greater man, in the sense that his ideals were 
higher, that his methods were purer, that his 
mental honesty was far greater, that his char- 
acter as a man was so much more attractive 
than Cavour's. Lincoln's object was the main- 
tenance of the integrity of the Union and the 
excision of slavery. Cavour's was the con- 
struction of United Italy. 

The Abolitionists led in the attack upon 
slavery. They had much to do with arousing 
the people of the North to the issue. They 
were extremists and had but comparatively 



52 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

few followers, but they exalted the cause and 
laid the foundations for its success. When, 
however, the work had to be done, when the 
practical issues were made, then they became 
obstructionists, their extreme position led them 
to do things that created opposition, and then 
progress was dependent upon a man as pro- 
foundly opposed to slavery as they, but who 
understood far better than they could the im- 
practical and impossible features of the course 
which they advocated. His failure to agree 
with them brought down upon his head quite 
as severe criticism as upon the heads of those 
upholding the cause of slavery itself, and Lin- 
coln was obliged to carry on his fight, in spite 
of these people, and against the attacks of 
Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley and 
their associates. 

Lincoln would not issue the emancipation 
proclamation until a year and half of war had 
been fought, and when he could do it without 
driving the border States into rebellion. The 
greatness of Lincoln was in feeling as deeply 
as these men did, but restraining his action with 
a view to the ultimate accomplishment of his 
desire. They gave way to the indignation of 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 53 

the moment, and in that indignation and in the 
gratification of it were hlind to the real hin- 
drance they were offering to their cause. So 
Cavour, planning years ahead and keeping in 
his mind, step by step, the progress toward the 
unification of Italy, had two men living at the 
same time with him who had a similar object, 
and each of whom at one stage or another in 
the progress toward it was essential to its pro- 
motion. Mazzini aroused the Italians to the 
highest enthusiasm in favor of united Italy. 
Garibaldi, in his desperate and seemingly im- 
possible campaigns, obtained results that 
greatly assisted Cavour toward their common 
end, but both Mazzini and Garibaldi hated Ca- 
vour and did not hesitate to frustrate his plans 
wherever they saw his working. These are not 
the only instances in which the cause of a great 
reform is first promoted by fanatical enthusi- 
asm and then obstructed by it, and finally the 
useful end is reached in spite of the early en- 
thusiasts, through the efforts of the construc- 
tive statesmen. 

Had Lincoln lived, it seems clear that the 
work of reconstruction of the South would 
have been better done than it was done. One 



54 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

of the most remarkable phases of Lincoln's 
character was his kindly patience toward the 
Southern people, and even toward their lead- 
ers, throughout a struggle in which he was ma- 
ligned and attacked and accused and held up 
to obloquy, both in this country and abroad. 
In spite of the insults and the contempt which 
were heaped upon him by the Southern press 
and leaders, he never permitted himself to give 
way to bitterness of feeling or to forget that 
they were part of the country, and that in the 
end they must be united with those who were 
contending for the Union. His death and the 
succession to his seat of Andrew Johnson 
greatly strengthened the radical element of the 
Republican party and led to an extreme course 
that did not make for the best plan of rehabili- 
tation of the South. It may be that, had Lin- 
coln been spared, however, the differences that 
he must have encountered afterward, while 
they could not have affected his real standing 
in history, might have modified somewhat his 
saint-like place in the affections of the Ameri- 
can people to-day. It may be that the high 
ideal they have of Lincoln to-day, stimulated 
by the time and manner of his taking off, has 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 55 

worked a higher good through his example 
than if he had been permitted to lend his hand 
in working out the difficult problems that were 
left to his successors. 

Lincoln's life, character, achievements, and 
writings have grown upon the world as years 
have passed. The beauty and truth of his lan- 
guage and thought give them universality of 
application. The flavor of his homely, humor- 
ous, and always apt illustrations which occur 
in his correspondence and reported conversa- 
tions create a longing to know him personally, 
while the dread responsibilities he had to carry 
and the patient sadness with which he bore 
them and his tragic end endear him. Ameri- 
cans love him because, while he was truly a 
product of their soil, with the traits given by 
a pioneer life, he showed in the supreme test 
the highest and most refined self-culture, the 
clearest vision, a Godlike sense of justice, and 
the supremest sacrifice of self. 

Lincoln, to us and to the world, means wis- 
dom and equal opportunity. He means the 
triumph of the moral over the expedient. He 
does not mean material growth. He does not 
mean physical comfort. He means justice to 



56 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

the humble and the downtrodden. He does not 
suggest great commercial strides. The United 
States is the richest nation in the world to-day. 
Its growth, the development of its resources, 
its rapid and substantial expansion, are the 
wonder of economists. Yet Lincoln stands 
for nothing of this. No one thinks of national 
wealth when Lincoln is named. Why, then, 
is he the great American? Why do we love 
him? Because he is to us the supreme sacrifice 
to virtue. He is the negation of what America 
too often stands for — the commercial spirit, 
the worship of the dollar. In his youth he saw 
the monstrous lie which slavery was in a re- 
public claiming to be founded on the equality 
of men and upon their right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. He typifies the find- 
ing of ourselves. In our greatest national 
crisis he means our moral national triumph 
after trials and blunders and defeat. He 
means the persistence of right and its spiritual 
influence to give the nation strength to per- 
form its herculean task. He represents the 
purest patriotism, the exaltation of justice and 
its maintenance over all obstacles. He vindi- 



BARNARD'S LINCOLN 57 

cates the rule of the people as not sordid and 
selfish and small, but true to the high ideal of 
Christian virtue and sacrifice. 

In such a time as this, when we are facing 
war for vindication of right, Lincoln is the 
figure that comes before our eyes. He is the 
ideal to whom we look and to whom we point 
our children. He shows the sacrifice our coun- 
try has a right to ask of us. His memory re- 
moves all dross from the fine gold of love of 
country. The thrill which Old Glory gives us 
as she floats in the blast of national danger and 
storm brings Lincoln to our eyes and thoughts. 
The Stars and Stripes, in their inspiring 
beauty, shadow forth the lineaments of Lin- 
coln's face to every true American. 

The sculptor in this presentment of Lincoln, 
which we here dedicate, portrays the unusual 
height, the sturdy frame, the lack of care in 
dress, the homely but strong face, the sad but 
sweet features, the intelligence and vision of 
our greatest American. He has with success 
caught in this countenance and this form the 
contrast between the pure soul and the com- 
manding intellect of one who belongs to the 



58 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

ages, and the habit, and garb of his origin and 
his life among the plain people — a profound 
lesson in democracy and its highest possibility. 

This statue of Lincoln, the gift of citizens 
of Cincinnati to the city where they were born 
and have lived their lives, the city they love, 
could not have been dedicated at a more fitting 
time. 

In the sun of grasping prosperity, in the 
comfort of extravagance and wealth, in the 
pride of commercial power and success, a re- 
minder of Lincoln would be apt only to warn 
us to seek higher ideals; but in the present 
stress of our country and in her impending 
struggle for the right of the peoples of the 
world against wrong, in this time of supreme 
trial, Lincoln's memory is a living force, an 
anchor of hope, an inspiration to highest ef- 
fort, an earnest of victory. 

In behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, 
I present this statue of Abraham Lincoln to 
the city of Cincinnati. 



Speech of Acceptance 



Speech of Acceptance 

BY 

The Honorable George Puchta, 
mayor of cincinnati 

THE history of our city reveals the story 
of a great and loyal people, who are 
always equal to any emergency and de- 
mand. Cincinnati men and women have gained 
international renown in statesmanship, music, 
philanthropy, commerce, art, and the sciences. 

Among our citizens foremost in the devel- 
opment and encouragement along these lines, 
none have been more generous and sympathetic 
than our hosts and donors of to-day, Mr. and 
Mrs. Charles P. Taft. 

On this occasion our city receives from 
them this magnificent gift, typical of a true 
American, whose personality and quality of 
statesmanship is attracting the love of all hu- 
manity during these trying times. The life 
and character of Abraham Lincoln, more per- 
haps than any other American, is worthy of 

61 



62 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

perpetuation in some such expression as this, 
because he was the personification of all the 
principles inherent in our form of government. 

It is my very great pleasure to speak the 
public's appreciation and the thanks of our 
city to Mr. and Mrs. Taft for this impressive 
gift. And it is our duty that we should pub- 
licly proclaim our love and esteem for the 
public spirit prompting them in this and many 
other occasions where the interests of the city 
and its people were concerned. 

May this occasion serve to inspire our peo- 
ple, young and old, to an observance of the 
spirit of higher and nobler citizenship such as 
is embodied in the occasion and ceremonies of 
to-day. 



The Cire Perdue Process 




Copyrighted by E. T. Hurley. 



Etching by E. T. Hurley 



The Cire Perdue Process 

THE Cire Perdue or "lost-wax process," 
which was used in casting the Barnard 
"Lincoln" by the Roman Bronze Works 
of Brooklyn, New York, is a rare and costly 
process employed by the ancients for obtaining 
the best results in bronze. 

From the finished statue in plaster a wax 
statue is made, very thin, the thickness the 
bronze should be. This hollow wax statue is 
filled inside with a mixture of plaster cement 
and ground brick, to withstand the fire. A 
thick coat of the same material covers the out- 
side of the wax statue. The wax is then melted 
out by slow fires, leaving a hollow place, into 
which the molten bronze runs, filling it up. 
When the bronze has cooled, the brickdust 
coating is chipped off the outside, and taken 
from the inside, leaving the bronze a perfect 
reproduction of the wax statue, melted out, 
or lost in the process. This is why it is called 
the lost- wax process, or cire perdue. 

65 



66 BARNARD'S LINCOLN 

It demands great care by the foundry ca- 
pable of doing this work, as not only their 
labor, but the artist's retouches, are lost if any- 
thing goes wrong. So much for the mechanical 
process ; the art value is that the wax statue can 
be retouched or remodeled over its entire sur- 
face, in texture and line. Every touch in this 
wax goes direct to the life of the bronze. The 
retouched, remodeled wax statue once cast, is 
lost, and cannot, therefore, be reproduced, as 
it is impossible for the artist to give the same 
touches again. Each wax statue so cast, is 
unique. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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